May 14, 2013

• Acute Inflamation of the Punies

  Ilah is having a bad morning. She’s “got it in the neck”, her legs are weak and she’s feeling puny. She needed an emergency Tylenol. I was malingering in bed when I heard, “Nan-ceee…”

  Nancy was in the kitchen. Nancy doesn’t hear all that well and Ilah is 95, nearly 96. Her projection is puny.

  So I rolled out of bed and was grabbing for some clothes when Nancy’s phone rang. It was me.

  (“Why am I calling Nancy?” I asked myself. “I’m a little busy, here…” Because the phone in Ilah’s room is in my name.)

  So half-dressed I raced to Ilah’s room (9 steps down the hall, limping) and she had colapsed in her chair.

  “I’ve got it in the neck, my legs don’t work. I need a Tylenol. Where’s Nancy?”

  “She’s in the kitchen.”

  “I can’t hear you.” She waves her hand regally, helplessly toward her bed. “Could you get me my hearing aids–they’re in a box. Bring the whole box.”

  I fetch her hearing aids, which are in the box right beside her bed and which she almost never puts in until after she’s had her morning bath, which renders every conversation we have before 11:30 useless: she asks a question, I answer, she blinks and then points to her ear and shakes her head.

  I have a thought: put them in in the morning when you get up, like I put on my glasses. There is some kind of issue with her hearing aids. It changes periodically, but there is always an issue. I suspect, if I were being fair about it, that hearing aids are problematic for everyone. 

  So I fetch the hearing aids and wait patiently while she installs the batteries, puts on her glasses and says, “Where’s Nancy?”

  “She’s in the kitchen.”

  “I called and called and nobody come…”

  “She can’t hear you.” But I can. You called once, and I came. I’m standing right here.

  I go and get her a glass of water and two Tylenol. I am muttering in my head about pain that is so excruciating that it could be resolved with two Tylenol, but I am never a fountain of pure joy first thing in the morning. I catch Nancy up on the adventures in the bed room.

  Ilah takes her pills. She needs to ‘rest’.

  About fifteen minutes later Nancy and I hear this weak, tired old lady’s voice say, “I’ve got to go to the bathroom…”

  It is hard to determine how much of what Ilah says out loud is intended for a listening audience and how much is personal rumination.

  One morning, sitting alone in the kitchen eating her breakfast, she said, “I wished I’d have died.”

  “What?” I called.

  She blinked and pointed to her ears.

  At lunch she told me an amusing story about something that happened 50 years ago, when she embarrassed herself so badly she wished she had died. “I was thinking about that this morning,” she said. 

  She’s had her breakfast, now. She’s going back to her room. “I’m feeling better, now,” she says. Actually her report was more detailed than that–her neck is still stiff, but her legs don’t hurt as much, and she doesn’t know what caused any of it.

  “Prob’ly old age,” Nancy says.

  She has her door open still. Either her room is too warm (I’m not sure there is a ‘too warm’ in her world) or she anticipates needing to send further updates on her condition in the near future. 

  I record all of this with one singular thought, which is the thought I continue to repeat, like a mantra, whenever I deal with Ilah. The thought is, I’m sixty-four. 

  I am unlikely to survive to the age of ninety-five–almost everything I have done with my life has pretty much guaranteed I won’t–but I have hereditary access to long-lived genes, and nothing is more abhorent to me than the thought of transitioning through the end-of-life in the care of someone who resents taking care of me. I want her to feel welcome here in our home–her home. I want her to feel safe and secure and well-cared for. It’s not even a deal–I’ll take good care of her if you’ll find someone to take good care of me–it’s a personal value. She deserves to feel loved and well-cared-for.

  Thank you for absorbing a little personal steam.

  • 10:02 am
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